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Arnold!, Frank

Presidential address
at opening meeting of
session of 1915

a

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Bureau of Scientific and Industrial Research

and

School of Specific Industries

of the

Royal Canadian Institute

Bulletin: Series I. No. I.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
at Opening Meeting of Session of 1915

by

President FRANK ARNOLDI, K.C.

Toronto

University of Toronto Press
1915

BUREAU OF SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

and

SCHOOL OF SPECIFIC INDUSTRIES

of the

ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE

Francis M. Turner, Jr., B.A., Secretary

Office - 198 College Street

Q

JLI

THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915.

We meet here to-night to open the sixty-eighth Session of this Insti-
tute.

The activities of the past year have been necessarily confined by
the commercial conditions which have prevailed, owing to the state
of war that exists.

The greater part of the papers read at the meetings held during the
last Session were upon subjects of very great interest in connection
with warlike operations. The appreciation which was shown by the
members and the public of these papers was very gratifying to
the Council, and seemed to give earnest of an awakened interest
in the proceedings of the Institute which has been worked for and
anticipated for some time past.

You have before you the programme of papers to be read at the six
meetings on each Saturday night from now until and including the 18th
of December. A short consideration of the subjects embraced in that
programme will awaken, I trust, a keen appreciation of the fact that the
Institute is fulfilling its duty, not alone to its members, but to the public
in general, in the most ample way.

One is frequently met in conversation with persons who do not take
the trouble to inform themselves of the work of the Institute, that they
are not drawn towards the meetings of the Institute by reason of the
scientific character which many of the papers possess. We may place
on record our sympathy for these individuals, merely adding that the
compliment conveyed in their reason for want of interest is a tribute
to the value of our work.

During the past year the Institute has had to mourn the death of several
members : —

Thomas Langton died 1914

Dr. A. M. Rosebrugh

James Bicknell V *- "

E. W. Cox

Dr. J. Galbraith

Alexander Nairn " "

D. R. Wilkie

J. H. Mathieson, St. Mary's

F. W. Kingstone

The Hon. Mr. Justice Maclennan died June 9, 1915.
Sir Sandford Fleming died July 22, 1915.

6 THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE.

We have to mourn also the death of Miss Logan, who since 1905 has
officiated in the office of the Institute, looking after the assortment and
distribution of the exchanges, the keeping of the records, and the carry-
ing on of the correspondence under supervision, and much other detail
work in connection with the Institute with signal industry and ability.
Miss Logan had become a sort of universal directory as to all the interior
economy of the Institute. All who had relations with her learned to
respect her and remember her most kindly, and now that she is gone
she is sadly missed.

In the death of Sir Sandford Fleming, the first Honorary President
of the Institute, who may be regarded as its founder in the year 1848,
not merely an outstanding pillar of the Institute, but one of our greatest
public men has passed away.

Dr. Kennedy, associated with the Institute for a great many years as
its President and as a member of the Council, has a paper prepared on
the subject of Sir Sandford Fleming's demise, which I will ask him later
to read, forbearing further comment myself.

When in November, 1914, it was my privilege to address you we
met under the pressure of the first few months of the greatest war ever
waged by man, cherishing in our inmost thought the hope which no one
dared to express, that not a long time would elapse before the Allies
would triumph and the strife cease. The year has passed with its
anxieties, thrills and great griefs, and the people of the British Empire,
far from realizing the hope we have mentioned, are in the stage of appre-
ciating that the end is not yet, and that before it comes, and to bring
that end about favourably to themselves, the sacrifices that the people
of the Allies have made must be supplemented by all the sacrifices
they are capable of making.

The calls made upon the spirit of sacrifice and endurance in the
case of the people of Great Britain have been so contrary to their state
of mind, social relations and mode of life moulded by a century of peace
and of great commercial prosperity, that new conditions must hereafter
prevail. We find that this is the common theme of the prominent
writers and commentators of the time. These say that things can never
again be in Great Britain as they were. A new order will prevail from
the time peace is declared. It is even said that the political life of the
nation will be changed in many respects. It would require much greater
prescience than we are accustomed to meet to enter with certainty into
a more particular enumeration of the new conditions arising and to
arise.

It is in the nature of things that there must be an incompatibility
between pre-war thought and post-war thought. When peace returns

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 7

those who have not been affected by the war will expect the world to go
back to its pleasures and frivolities; saturated with their past they will
fail to apprehend what those who have been through the war are thinking.
These latter will have the learning of their experience, which those who
have not had the experience will fail to understand. The men with this
experience will grow older, and assume a greater and greater position of
authority in the world of thought. Their views must in the end prevail,
and all may as well accept the fact that there is a new world opening
before us to be essentially different from that which is behind us. Old
ideas may live till they are eradicated, but eradicated they will be.

The new world with all its real happiness and prosperity, with all
its seriousness and depth of purpose, with all its industry and self-
sacrifice will assuredly appear, and the world of shams and failures will
vanish away.

On the subject of national efficiency we already know this for certain,
that whereas it has been found out by experience that in the past, whether
from the long reign of peace or the enormous prosperity of the country,
the means of national efficiency have been utterly neglected, the so
called anti-militarism and deceiving pacifism which ruled the public
mind not only blinded every one to the necessity for advancing in the
application of science to the means for the protection and safety of the
country, but stood in the way of necessary preparedness in the matter
of munitions and men. It is also certain that the long continued pro-
sperity and the commanding position which Great Britain enjoyed in
the commerce of the world, bred in the people a false sense of security
and a condition of complacency which made them content to plod
along in the ways of former generations, accepting from Germany and
other countries advanced in the application of the discoveries of science
thoee things which such discoveries produced, without a thought that
they should produce these things themselves.

The condition of the people in these respects was apathetic.

The people of Great Britain have at last been awakened. Experi-
ence since the war commenced has taught them that late as it is they
cannot hope to succeed in this great contest unless they make part of
their fighting force the same efficiency which their opponents have used
to prepare their means for the tremendously aggressive campaign
which they have waged, and are continuing to wage.

How have the experiences of the war found the people of Canada?
What do they think of the lessons learned by the people of Great Britain?

The people of Canada have risen to the full height of their manhood
and their duty as a British people in the matter of providing soldiers
to aid in fighting for and preserving the British Empire. AH praise to

8 THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE.

Canada's sons who have so honourably responded to the call of the
Empire. The rest of the people of Canada are doing their duty nobly
for the Red Cross and the comforts of the soldiers at the front, in
the hospitals, and on their return as ineffectives. There is, however,
the business and social life of the country, what can we say of that?
Is it not true that the people as a whole are conducting their business,
their manufactures and their lives much as if nothing had happened —
not looking for any radical changes as a result of the war, but waiting
till it ceases with the expectation that things will go on as they did
before. The immense expenditure on munitions of war now in progress
in Canada must bring a degree of prosperity which it is difficult to
measure — undoubtedly various prevailing conditions will bring into
the country a large amount of money. The same will happen in the
country to the south of us. Such conditions alone will not suffice to
make the people of this country or of the United States permanently
prosperous.

It is common knowledge to all that will learn that the United States
has long since developed within itself a means of doing its manufacturing
and trade in a great degree by large trade combinations such as in
Canada we have not yet been able to rival. These combinations long
since learned the necessity for applying the discoveries of science and
scientific research to the betterment of their processes, the saving and
utilization of by-product and waste, and the investigation of materials
and processes for new products and new means of more economically
producing products already known.

The war experience has shown them and the whole world how
dependent they were upon Germany for many things which were the
result of application of science and scientific research by the German
people.

In the United States the result is already apparent in a vast advance
in the opening of plants to manufacture many of the things required,
and a multiplication and livening up of the means of scientific investi-
gation to discover and to demonstrate the means and the result called
for.

The people of Canada have made no move as yet in the direction
above indicated. Nothing has been done to give value to the term
"made in Canada" when our goods are so labelled.

The term "made in Germany" we all know has not among us the
reputation of pointing to any superiority in the articles upon which it
appears. The fact nevertheless is that hundreds of products "made
in Germany" have been upon the markets of the world possessing a
value actually due to the fact that they could be procured exclusively

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 9

in Germany, or that their quality by reason of efficiency of process or
manufacture could not be rivalled in cheapness outside of Germany.
It is stated in publications on the subject that the German products
exclusively manufactured by them from coal tar and kindred sources
number upwards of thirteen hundred. The manufacturing premises
of that great firm of the Badische Anilin u. Soda Fabrik occupies alone a
mile and a half of the bank of the Rhine, while a great many other parent
sources have been exploited by them also, resulting in hundreds of pro-
ducts. In relation to this subject the amateur character of the infor-
mation which I possess compels me to leave further details to those
more intimately and practically acquainted with such matters. The
whole of this great German trade has been by the occurrences of the
past fifteen months thrown open to all the countries in the world. De-
prived of it, Germany's great sources of wealth are suspended. It must
be remembered that the scientific institutions, the laboratories, the
manufactories, and the commercial equipment of Germany will not be
destroyed, and it depends upon the means taken by the rest of the
world to meet a resumption of German aggressive commercialism to
see whether the suspension of her special trade will be converted into
its permanent loss. Before the time arrives for Germany's attempts
at commercial recovery, the other countries of the world must take care
to establish and prepare to maintain the production of those articles,
commodities and things which form the exclusive trade of Germany.
They must be ready to withstand the aggressive power which German
manufacturers and German science and efficiency will be able to exercise
by flooding their markets with these products with which local manu-
facturers may find it impossible to compete, unless steps have been
taken to meet such an emergency. Mere protective duties will not
suffice for this purpose. There must be real live business energy in the
commercial manufacturing world directed to the preservation of its
interests. The people of the British Empire must understand that there
will be this great commercial war to carry on with Germany, that it
will call for all the resources, all the intelligence, all the learning, and
all the assistance that can be derived by these means from scientific
and industrial research and personal enterprise on the part of its people
to wage the combat. It will be an Empire war. Great Britain itself is
not equal to the emergency; she must have the assistance of all her
dominions and dependencies. Canada must step in. Here we have
the resources in nature, in men, in learning and opportunity to take a
large and important part among the forces required for the contest.
England has already taken steps forward in the matter, which you will
no doubt hear of from some of the speakers here to-night. While we

10 THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE.

are waiting we are endangering our interests, endangering our commercial
future. We should spring at the great business opportunities which
are presented to us. The Government of Canada for its part, we trust,
will immediately step in and follow the lead of England in this respect.
We have the right to expect that Governmental efforts will be im-
mediately supplemented by the successful support of the Bureau of
Scientific and Industrial Research which we are now promoting to deal
with the private commercial aspects of the campaign, and as well to
participate in and to promote the general commercial success of Canada's
enterprises and manufactures.

The Royal Canadian Institute has acted in the direction indicated
by the institution of a " Bureau of Scientific and Industrial Research
and School of Specific Industries", following upon the advocacy of such
a course set forth in the publications of the Institute, and particularly
the "Red Pamphlet" issued in 1914.

This Bureau, as promised, is modelled on the Mellon Institute at
Pittsburg, of which much has already been said in the "Red Pamphlet,"
and in addresses delivered in the Institute. The Bureau is already in
operation and meeting, through its secretary, such persons and corpora-
tions as should or may require to have its aid. The investigations which
the Bureau may be called upon or be employed to make, it will place
in the most efficient hands to be found for the particular purpose in
view at one of the universities under such conditions as may be neces-
sary. In particular cases it may be necessary for the Bureau itself to
make the research, for which means will in this particular case have to
be provided by endowment by the applicant for the research. The
conditions of research will in each case be the subject of an agreement
with the applicant similar to that form of agreement ratified by use at
the Mellon Institute. You will at once ask how the Institute has pro-
vided the means for the maintenance of the Bureau — even the initial
means necessary to meet the preliminary expenses of launching it.
My answer is that the Institute has not been able to provide the means
required. The members and the public are to be asked to provide the
means which are required, to the amount of about $10,000, which will
set the work going satisfactorily, and enable us during the first year to
provide for the future, in case (unlike the Institute at Pittsburg) we do
not find ourselves visited by benefactors like the Brothers Mellon to
provide one half million for a laboratory for the Bureau and another
half million for it spermanent endowment.

A committee has been formed for the purpose of collecting the means
required, consisting of the following governors of the Bureau, i.e.: Prof.
J. C. McLennan, Frank Arnoldi, J. B. Tyrrell, Dr. Field, W. B. Tindall,
Prof. A. B. Macallum, and the Secretary-Treasurer F. M. Turner.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 11

A word or two is necessary as to the field which the Bureau will seek
to fill. The commercial world and its industries necessarily require the
advantage of scientific and industrial research as the universities give
it for educational purposes and the advancement of the public interests
in every way. A general scheme for scientific and industrial research
utilizing the universities, a Government Commission backing up the
universities may well be called upon to undertake. Into this field the
work of the Bureau will largely extend, but the commercial world and
its industries require in addition something of a different kind. The
individual factors, the corporations, the partnerships, the individuals
carrying on manufactures and enterprises require scientific and in-
dustrial research in their individual spheres and for their individual
benefit. This work to a large extent the universities may find means
to do. The selection of the best instrumentality, whether in a uni-
versity or in the Bureau itself, or otherwise, for any particular investi-
gation contemplated, necessarily calls for a competent body, capable
and organized, to put forth the necessary propaganda and to provide
a selecting body with machinery adapted for the negotiation with the
applicant, the proper choice of the investigator, and the making of the
agreement for a Fellowship, or other form of endowment of the investi-
gation between the applicant on the one hand and the proposed investi-
gator on the other. It is self-evident that the instructional functions
of the universities and their trust for the general public prevent their
taking upon them these functions of the Bureau of Scientific and In-
dustrial Research, which, however, in its investigations, will necessarily
depend largely upon and ask for the assistance of the universities wher-
ever it is available.

In view of the action of the British Government in calling to their
assistance the great scientists and scientific manufacturers of Great
Britain to aid in the application of science to the production of efficient
munitions of war, your Council in its name, and in the name of the
members of the Institute, by letter to the Prime Minister of Canada,
has placed the services of the Institute, its Council, its Bureau, and the
use of its Library unreservedly at the command of the Government of
Canada for the same purpose. It is hoped that they may be as fully
availed of as they will be freely given.

Although, apart from the special demands we have alluded to for
the employment of scientific methods and research, the war does not
seem to have retarded scientific progress generally.

Necessity has created calls throughout the world which have been
answered by new applications of known scientific principles, and by
new discoveries and inventions, more particularly in the warring coun-

12 THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE.

tries. There is evidence of much progress of this kind in Germany,
and although the knowledge of it is withheld as much as posible from
the rest of the world, it has been furnished in many ways. We may
instance the wonderful advance in the construction of submarines up
to the point of the so-called super submarine capable of prolonged
voyages never dreamt of for such craft prior to the war. The same
thing may be said of air craft of all kinds.

England and France we know have also made immense advances
in the construction of their submarines and air craft, so much so indeed
as to outclass the Germans, and in addition have produced scientific
means and machines which have practically defeated and stopped
Germany's submarine warfare against the Allies, and in the air have
more than met every device of the enemy.

Further instances in this direction some of those present will no
doubt take the opportunity to tell us about.

We have so far spoken of the effect of the war upon the people of the
British Empire. Let us for a moment ask ourselves what the effect is
now upon the nations of the civilized world — what it may be after peace
is declared.

Before the war there had been for a century growing stronger among
the nations, outwardly at least, a strong sympathy for humanity; the
standard of national honour was high, and no insult to a country could
exceed that of doubting the good faith of its government or its observ-
ance of its treaty obligations.

These conditions were shown by the growth of influential peace
parties in the chief nations of Europe and America, who spread their
propaganda for the settlement of all international disputes without
war by means of convention or by arbitration till within recent years
the Tribunal of the Hague was erected for the trial and determination
of what may be designated international law suits to be brought before
it. The relations between the nations had developed what might be
said to amount to a code of international law which was added to by
agreements entered into by the Powers at the Hague, and later by the
Treaty of London so far as that Convention was adopted.

All this structure was built upon the good faith of the nations. The
world thought good faith a safe security for the fulfilment of the obliga-
tions of Treaties and international law.

What was to be done with a Power which did not abide by its obliga-
tions in these respects was not provided for. In the nature of things
it could not be provided for and was not discussed till the circumstances
attending the war brought a suggestion for the formation of a con-

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 13

federacy of the Powers to enforce the observance of national treaties
and obligations.

Probably this suggestion will be unearthed by posterity as one of
the curiosities of this age of the world. What is to be hoped for is that
when German Militarism shall have been crushed the horrors of what
has occurred will operate in the minds of all nations automatically to
produce such unity of thought and action among them as will enable
them to overawe on the part of any country any effort to make war
or in case of necessity by force of arms punish or restrain the offending
nations.

We live in a time when the whole structure which we have referred
to for the preservation of peace has been utterly repudiated by Germany
and Austria. Their action has made itself evident that there is no means
of preserving peace or the sanctity of treaty obligations, or enforcing
submission to international law, when a nation thinks itself strong
enough to defy the opinion and the arms of the other nations of the world.
On the basis of German "kultur" international obligations stand only
for those who are not strong enough to repudiate them. The honour of
the Central Powers has been cast in the mire. While the other nations
of the world hold to the sacredness of treaty obligations, the mandates
of international law, and the dictates of humanity, these are all repudi-
ated by Germany and Austria. Their creed is such that they will not
acknowledge, much less voluntarily expiate, the wrongs which they have
perpetrated against God and man, by bringing on the war indeed — but
a thousand times more so by the ruthless, wanton and cruel way in
which it has been waged in the invaded countries. The other nations
of the earth cannot submit to the rule of national license which Germany
and Austria have set up.

In quietness and confidence let us await the victory of the nations
who are fighting for truth and justice against the powers of hell let loose
by Germany.

The conflict involves an issue of life and death for all that gives real
worth to human existence — for all civilization, all progress, all morality,
all liberty worthy of those august names.

It will be a long fight, doubtless a fight in which our enemy will
shrink from no atrocities, but it will be a fight to the finish. The
commonest considerations of prudence make this certain.

The stern judgment of the old Roman patriot upon the great foe of
his country was "Delenda est Carthago". As stern a resolution is on
the lips of all true lovers of their country and of mankind be they English,
or French, Russian, Italian, Japanese, and I do not hesitate to add
American. German militarism must be utterly destroyed and the

14 THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE.

monstrous creation of blood and iron be overthrown. Such is the plainest
dictate of the instinct of self preservation. It is also the plainest dictate
of justice. Germany must be paid that she has deserved and a reckon-
ing be had also personally with the pillagers, assassins, and murderers
who have carried out her pitiless campaign. Germany must be put in
a position that never again shall she have the ability to rise to defy the
world as she has done.

We must not ignore, in dwelling on these matters, the difficulties
that stand in the way of attaining such results. No falsehood, no
artifice, no crime, no consideration, moral or otherwise, no baseness
stands for one moment between Germany and the objects she seeks to
attain. Even now she is feeling the public of the other nations on the
possibility of peace on some terms to save her face. The greatest danger
to be met is that the Allies may allow themselves to be bluffed into a
premature and inconclusive peace.

The Allies hold the winning position and all that is necessary is to
stand fast together sternly mindful of the fact that it is not the German
armies alone that are to be met, but in addition the vast secret influence
and power possessed by Germany in that great number of its people,
and of its agents and spies resident in the countries of the Allies and in
the United States, combined with the strength and ramifications of
German financial interests throughout the world, more particularly
in England and the United States. The significant fact may be pointed
out, viz., that in England the public trustee has been appointed the
custodian of property to the amount of upwards of one hundred million
pounds sterling belonging to alien enemies. The agents and protagon-
ists of high finance will not lose sight of these facts, and their machina-
tions must be sternly faced.

With all the craving of the public for information it is yet true that
little is known outside of those in high places of the inner history of
the war. We are with difficulty able to learn a fraction of the happen-
ings from day to day. Political action, diplomatic action affecting
these happenings and the relations of the nations are as to nearly
everything a sealed book. So it seems from the light of the past it must
be.

On this subject Prof. Webster in his inaugural address before the
University of Edinburgh in 1914 said:

"You will look in vain for the books which can teach Englishmen
the connection of their own country with the political life of the conti-
nent during the nineteenth century. Such books cannot be improvised
on the spur of the moment in the midst of a national crisis. Few will
dispute that the study of our diplomatic history in the past century

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 15

is of real and immediate importance to-day. Yet the work has scarcely
been begun. There is, for example, as yet no adequate record of the part
England played in the great reconstruction of Europe after the Napole-
onic Wars. Neither Canning nor Palmerston is known to us, except by
loose and inadequate records."

After our day the history of the momentous times in which we live
will be written. We must be content with the fragments of history in
the making which fall to us in the meantime, and from day to day carry
our hopes and disappointments as they come with such fortitude as
we may.

"None of us are prepared to suppose anything so unscientific as that
the Allies are decadent and the Germans superhuman, or that all goes
well with them yonder while all goes ill with the Allies. Let us try to
conceive that a war is a slow and hazardous shifting of unequal values.
Let us recognize that, as this war is vaster in itself than all the cam-
paigns and battles of two centuries put together, a decisive transfor-
mation of values must not be looked for suddenly. We cannot expect
to achieve in teens of months success such as our forefathers could only
gain in teens of years. Reflecting that in the case of the British people
never were the parties, the Kingdom and the Empire united as now,
and that never before had we forces so great and gallant, or Allies so
determined and powerful. Let us not look on the dark side, which is
that never before had we so powerful an enemy. Let us be calm in the
confidence of ultimate success, as British patriots put up with post-
ponement patiently, with the certain conviction that the longer the war
goes on the worse and more lasting will the ruin of Germany be, and the
wider the influence of Great Britain in the vast changed future now to
come."

FRANK ARNOLDI,

President.

V.

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Arnold!, Frank

Presidential address at
opening meeting of session
of 1915

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